Blackwell Family
Lucy Stone

Subject File
Biographical Papers 
(general)When Deacon Henshaw was on trial before the church in West Brookfield for having entertained anti slavery speakers at his house, and perhaps, also for being President of the Worcester [  ] North Division Antislavery Society, a good many church meetings were held.  Where the first vote was taken Mamma, who did not know that women church members could not vote, held up her hand with the rest.  The minster, a tall, dark man, stood up and pointed over toward her, and said to the man who was counting the votes, "Don't you count her."  The man said, "Why, isn't she a member?" The minister answered, "Yes, she is a member, but she is not a voting member."  The accent of scorn with which he said, "not a voting member," touched her "in just the right place."  I had an opinion; I was a member; I had a right."  The vote was taken six-times, and every time she held up her hand.  And she held it up with a flash of her eye as she lay in bed telling me about it.Dr. Emily Blackwell to Lucy Stone, June 11,
1877: "The children were much pleased
with Lucy's present of pieces; they are
manufacturing doll's dresses out of them."

Miss S. Ellen Blackwell to Lucy Stone,
1877: expressing thanks for papers sent
to the children, "Babyland" +c, with which
they were delighted. They put transparent
paper over the pictures + traced them,
+ some of the tracings were so good
that Ellen Blackwell sent them to her
sister Anna: "When I told the children
what I had done they said I ought to
have sent them to Aunt Lucy, for it
was she sent them the papers, + said they
ought to draw in the afternoon."

Luther Stone writes to Lucy Stone,
March 4, 1877: "Little Allie sends thanks
for her papers. She enjoys them very much."(Reminiscences of Lucy Stone)
 New Hampton, N.H. Nov 28, 1894
Miss Alice Stone Blackwell:
Yours of Oct. 17 rec'd.
When your mother was at my house in
Towanda, Penna., in February 1870, and 
lectured in the Court House in which I
was Clerk of the Court, she confounded and
surprised the judges, the lawyers, and the
people who packed every inch of space to
hear her. In the morning before the
lecture of the evening, I was almost in
tears as I went into the Post Office, and a
prominent lawyer and Presbyterian said some
unkind words - Yes low words - of your mother
whom he had never seen, nor read a word
of her writings. I had a struggle to keep the
Court House doors being locked against her.
My influence as an officer of the Court for
ten years was all that hindered.
After the lecture at 10 P.M. what
a revulsion of feeling. The people rushed in
masses begging me to present them to her,

and clambered over each other to greet her
without any formality. A four-horse sleigh
with gay trappings, during the exultation was
brought to the door and I was carried over
the heads of the crowd and placed in the 
sleigh, while Mrs. Chaapel and Mrs. Stone
were honored (if honor it was for such
ignorance, but good persons most of them)
with the best seats, while a band of music
accompanied us to my home half a mile 
away, overlooking the beautiful Susquehanna
River.
The next morning, as I went
to my office, everyone, even my bigoted
Presbyterian friend, greeted me with great
praise for getting such a model woman
to lecture. She told the lawyers where to
find many laws that disgraced the statute
books of the land of Penn, - laws that
they had never seen, and even the Judge
stood in wonder listening to her, and
whispered to me, "Where did she graduate,and how did she find time to study those
old law books?" ...
Very sincerely
Jay Chaapel
------

Lucy Stone was the pioneer lecturer on
the woman question. Before her, the women who
had spoken in public at all, were advocating
either religious thought or abolition. While working
with the antislavery people she found herself
so unable to forget the woman question,
that she gave first a part, and later almost
all of her time to lectures on that subject.
This she did for several years before any
other woman did more than attend special
conventions and similar gatherings. Her
gentle, persuasive manner in that early day
converted more men and women to equal 
suffrage, I think, than has ever been done by
any other advocate of the woman's cause.
She was equally good as an orderly and painstaking
housekeeper, and as an advocate of better
public housekeeping. She impressed everyone
with the personal sincerity with which she felt
the need of wider activity for womanhood. She was
[[?]] in setting up all the convention before the waOn Jan. 15, 1924, Mrs. Fanny B. Ames,
widow of Rev. Charles G., said she first
heard Lucy Stone when a school girl
at the Quaker school near Richmond,
Ind., in 1854-5 when she was about 15.
Lucy Stone was to speak in Richmond
+ the girls were given a chance to go.
She said she should like to. Lucy 
Stone was wearing a black satin dress
edged with fur, + it came just about
to the tops of her boots, which were also
edged with fur. She told how women, if 
married, did not own their property, or
their children, + were subject to
various disabilities; + she (Mrs. Ames)

grew more + more indignant, as the speaker
gave examples; + on the way home in the
school bus, she stood up + said to
the other girls, "Let us all stand by
that woman" as long as we live,
or something to that effect.Feb. 19 - 1870
Page 52
(Correspondence from Springfield
Ill. Unsigned. Describes Convention)
"The first speech of the day was
made by Lucy Stone, while the
nominating and business

committees were out attending
to their duties. She spoke
in her happiest manner, comparing
the conditions and prospects
of woman to-day, with that
of the women of half a century
ago, and arguing the right
of woman to the elective franchise.
Very few of the audience had
ever seen Mrs. Stone before,
but all had heard of her.
Her unlikeness to the ideal most
had formed of her led to
many comical comments."Why," said Hon. John Nord, of
Sycamore, "that Lucy Stone has
been a perfect terror to me for
twenty years! I had imagined
her to be a regular virago,
and had expected to hear
such scolding as I had
never listened to. Wasn't I 
taken aback, when that gentle,
ladylike woman began to talk!
I wanted to agree with her,
before she had spoken ten
minutes, and was only sorry
when I couldn't." And this

was the general expression.
This opinion of her had been
formed from the Western press,
which, until within a very 
short time, has abused and
belied, without strict, every
woman advocating womanhood
suffrage, from Lucy Stone
and Anna Dickinson
down.
---Miss Hattie E. Turner's Reminiscences,
June 12, 1922.
Hattie said Mamma's last words to her were:
"Woman Suffrage and all the other good things
will come. You will live to see it, and I shall
see it from the other side.

She said Mamma was very prompt,
and would always start in time if she had
a train to catch. Papa would assure her
that there were "oceans of time", and ask her
why she started so early. She said she
didn't want to have to go up a squirrel-track.
He would wait till the last minute, even if
it was an important train to the Washington
Convention, for instance. To his assurances that
there would be oceans of time to start later,
she would calmly answer, "I don't think
so, dead," and persist in starting off. She
liked to cross streets by the crossings, but

he would angle across, and dive through alleys,
and short cuts, and go around by the printing-office,
on his way to the station - he said, 
he "took it on the way" even when it was quite
off in another direction.
When Alice Brown came into our 
office - who had a lively imagination like
his own - he would say to her mysteriously, "Did
you see him?" And she would play up to him,
answering in the same tone, and they would
keep the ball up for some time - about how 
"he" was flying over the State House, etc. --
all sorts of nonsense- her black eyes
looking as impish as possible.
Hattie also recalled how on Thanksgiving
and other holidays, Mamma would invite out
students and various young people who were
away from home; how hospitable and
kind Mamma had been to her. Mammagenerally wore black silk, with a cap and
shawl of fine white lace - as shown in her
photos; and a little black bonnet with a 
suggestion of Quakerism in its style.

Hattie told how Papa bought a new
horse during Mamma's absence at the
Chicago Exposition of 1893, and when she came
home, and they were to drive from Boston out
to Pope's Hill, Hattie was invited to go along;
and Papa wanted Mamma to observe the new
horse, and she could hardly pay attention
to the horse because she was so full of what
she had seen and heard at Chicago, telling
Hattie about the many fine women she
had met there, Mrs. Potter Palmer and
others, and how she hoped they were all going
to be suffragists, and help the cause along.

Papa was adventurous. When we were out 
driving, if we came to a road marked "Private
Way, Dangerous Passing," it always impelled him
to wish to turn in and explore it. We read
about some road which grew fainter and fainter,
and finally turned into a squirrel track and
ran up a tree; and I think this was what
led Mamma to make that reference to a 
squirrel track, mentioned by Hattie Turner.Mamma was very economical. She had
been trained to be, as a girl, and had had
to be as a poor reform lecturer, and the
habit always stayed with her. She not
only gave away a great deal of our surplus
fruit, but also sold much to a provision
store in Harrison Square - sometimes just a 
small quantity at a time - a box of blackberries
or of raspberries. Papa said she tried to help out
our income by a multitude of "minute economies."
During her last illness, a little olive oil was
needed, perhaps to oil some instrument - 
and I brought just a few drops in a saucer,
and she commended me for taking no more
than enough. She hated waste.

Mamma said that it was surprising
Papa should ever have married "so grim a person"
as herself. She seemed a very gentle person,
but there was something underneath the gentleness
and kindness like the firmness of a great rock.

Henry B. Blackwell said that Lucy Stone, 
in the early days was "the Liberty Belle."Suffrage
When she began to lecture she would not charge an admission
fee, partly because she was anxious that as many people
as possible should hear and be converted, and she
feared that an admission fee might keep some
one away; and partly from something of the Quaker
feeling that it was wrong to take pay for preaching
the gospel. She economized in every way. When
she stayed in Boston, she used to put up at a
lodging-house on Hanover Street, where they
gave her meals for twelve and a half cents, and
lodging for six and a quarter cents, on condition
of her sleeping in the garret with the daughters
of the house, three in a bed.
Once when she was in great need of a
new cloak, she came to Salem, Mass., where
she was to lecture, and found that the Hutchinson 
family of singers were to give a concert
the same evening. They proposed to her to
unite the entertainments and divide the proceeds.
She consented, and bought a cloak with the

money. She was also badly in want of other clothing.
Her friends assured her that the audiences
would be just as large despite an admission
fee. She tried it, and finding that the audiences
continued to be as large as the halls would
hold, she continued to charge a door fee, and
was no longer reduced to such straits.
In 1855 she married Henry B. Blackwell,
a young hardware merchant of Cincinnati, a 
strong woman's rights man and abolitionist. In
1853 he had attended a legislative hearing in
the State House in Boston, when Wendell Phillips,
Theodore Parker and Lucy Stone spoke in behalf
of a woman suffrage petition headed by Louisa
Alcotts mother; and he had made up his 
mind at that time to marry her if he could.
She had meant never to marry, but to devote
herself wholly to her work. But he promised to
devote himself to the same work, and persuaded
her that together they could do more for it thanshe could along. The wedding took place at the
home of the bride's parents at West Brookfield, Mass.
They had to send thirty miles for a minister who would
marry them without using the word "obey." Rev. J.W. Higginson,
who afterwards left the ministry for reform work and
the army, and is now known as Col. Higginson,
was the pastor of a church in Worcester. He came
on and performed the ceremony. At the time of their
marriage, they issued a joint protest against the 
inequalities of the law which gave the husband the
control of his wife's property, person and children.
This protest, which was widely published in the papers,
gave rise to much discussion, and helped to get
the laws amended.
She regarded the loss of a wife's name
at marriage as a symbol of the loss of her individuality. 
Eminent lawyers, including Ellis Gray Loring
and Samuel E. Sewall, told her there was no law requiring
a wife to take a husband's name; it was only
a custom. Accordingly she decided, with her husband's 

full approval, to keep her own name, and she has
continued to be called by it during early forty years of
happy and affectionate married life.
The account of her later years must be condensed
into a few lines. She and her husband have lectured
together in many States, taken part in most of the
campaigns when suffrage amendments have been
submitted to popular vote, have addressed Legislatures,
published articles, held meetings far and wide, been 
instrumental in securing many improvements in the 
laws, and have together done an unrecorded and
incalculable amount of work in behalf of equal rights.
A few years after her marriage, while they were living
in Orange, N.J., Mrs. Stone let her goods be signed
and sold for taxes, and wrote a protest against
taxation without representation, with her baby on her
knee. In 1866 she helped organize the American
Equal Rights Association, which was formed to work
for equal rights for both negroes and women, and
she was chairman of its executive committee. In1869, with William Lloyd Garrison, George William Curtis,
Col. Higginson, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Mary
A. Livermore and others, she organized the American
Woman Suffrage Association, and was chariman
of its executive committee for nearly twenty years.
She has always craved, not the post of prominence,
but the post of work.
Most of the money with which the
Woman's Journal was started in Boston in 1870,
was raised by her efforts. When Mrs. Livermore, whose
time was under increasing demand in the lecture
field, resigned the editorship in 1872, Mrs. Stone
and her husband took charge of the paper, and
they have edited it ever since, assisted latterly
by their daughter.
Of late years, Mrs. Stone has been much
confined at home by rheumatism, but works
for suffrage at her desk as diligently as she
used to do upon the platform. Her sweet,
motherly face, under its white cap, is dear

to the eyes of audiences at suffrage gatherings,
and sometimes the mere sight of her has
converted an obstinate opponent whom no
arguments had been able to move, simply because
she was so different from all his 
preconceived ideas of her. Better than most
mortals, she knows how to grow old beautifully.
Her life is now passing into a serene old
age, loved and honored by a multitude of
younger women, but loved the most by those who
know her best.

(Footnote to above)
It has often occurred to me that a biographical
sketch of Mrs. Lucy Stone would be in interest to the
readers of the Woman's Journal; but I never could
get Mrs. Stone's permission to publish one. I wrote
this sketch last summer for the Housekeeper's Weekly
of Philadelphia. It is reprinted here without Mrs.
Stone's knowledge or consent, and with the certaintythat she will be annoyed when she sees it. But I 
think the readers of the Journal will be glad.
                                     A.S.B.


Oct. 9 1893   Mrs. Howe came to see Mamma.
Mamma told her she was ready to pass away,
without a doubt or without fear. "I look forward
to the other side as the bright side."
   Later Mamma said to me after we had
been speaking of a dear friend of hers, whose husband 
was not very satisfactory: "But I do believe
that a woman's truest place is in a home, with a
husband and with children, and with large freedom
pecuniary freedom, personal freedom and the
right to vote". She said she thought Mrs. Hermotie
was mistaken in saying the wife should bear 
her share of the bread-winning." She bears the
children,"said Mamma, " and her hands are
full." But if the bread-winning  falls to her, she
must be equal to it.Oct. 9, 1893. Mrs. Howe brought a report that Mrs.
Stauton was dying; and Mamma told me that
perhaps she and Mrs. Stauton should meet each
other, the first persons they would see on the
other side. She thought it would be odd if it
should prove so. She said if Mrs. Stauton were
dying, it was probably of apoplexy, and she believed 
in that case one went right out without knowing
anything; and she said, "I think I should rather
know something" - or "something about it."